I’ve lived in Taipei for twelve years, not as long as some scions of the expatriate community, but long enough to have sunk into a groove running comfortably between my apartment and a few favorite cafes and restaurants.

Gastromonth offered Taipei foodies the chance to eat their way through 20 Michelin Starred and Plated restaurants, some of whom had created a special menu just for the occasion. I ate my way through five of these. Here’s what I found.

Taiwan’s friendly people and unique combination of urban civilization and indigenous culture make it an ideal destination for experiential education. Two student leaders from America relate their story of leading a student travel group around Taiwan.

Taiwan has long been a destination for cat lovers, ever since the first cat café opened its doors in Taipei in 1998. Since then, the trend has swept across Japan with the rest of the world recently catching on.

Taitung County’s Chishang is known for bicycling, beauty and agriculture. But in October, it’s known for something else: An annual harvest festival filled with food, culture and world-class entertainment, The Chishang Autumn Harvest Festival.

Eric Lin was not merely my first Taiwanese friend – we’d actually met on the flight that brought me to Taiwan. He was trying to start a business with his friend based on a design idea they’d come up with in their spare time for better packaging of fragile items, which would enable him to quit his monotonous engineering job. He was great fun to talk to, and I was drawn to his complicated shyness: just awkward enough for it to be apparent, but not enough to stop him from ringing me up to have coffee.

Not long ago, when news of rich and powerful men finally being called to account – dethroned as a comeuppance for sexually predatory behavior – was still rolling in, my friend Darice Dan Chang wrote about how the movement had barely touched Taiwan. Although I’m usually upbeat about life in Taiwan as a woman compared to the rest of Asia, she had a point.